The Mess in the Middle

General NCS Basketball11

Somewhere in the middle of the conference, a #5 seed will be found for the ACC Tournament…even though at times it hasn’t looked like anyone wanted it. Here are the five through the nine seeds, even if we don’t know which team will end up where:

 

W/L

RPI

Florida St.

8-7

54

Maryland

7-8

51

Virginia

7-8

66

Miami
FL

7-8

76

Clemson

6-9

67

RIVALRY FINISHES


FSU vs Miami

FSU has the inside track on the five seed and got a nice bounce in their RPI ranking after beating Duke. However with the loss last Saturday to VT, I think that they still have some work left to do.

Miami has had a really tough conference slate this year (more on this after the weekend) and it shows in their record. A four-game losing streak to the top four teams in the conference and Wed. night’s loss to Maryland has all but pushed Miami off the back-side of the Bubble.

These two teams meet in Miami on Sunday. Miami won the first meeting in overtime.


UVa vs Maryland

Maryland kept their slim NCAA tourney hopes alive by beating Miami on Wednesday night. Now we’ll see if they can salvage their season, or if they just succeeded in pulling Miami into the NIT with them.

UVa was thoroughly embarrassed in Chapel Hill Wednesday night. Even worse, the loss continued a bad stretch of games….two game losing streak, lost three of last four, lost six of their last ten. Take your pick…it doesn’t look good for the Hoos.

If memory serves, UVa helped close down Cole Field House and this year Maryland will return the favor by playing the last men’s conference game in University Hall. Someone will get to 0.500 in the conference by the end of the day on Sunday. Maryland won the first game going away after overcoming an eight-point half time deficit.


Clemson vs Georgia Tech

A home win over GT would give Clemson seven conference wins….the most since 1998, which was their last trip to the NCAA tourney. Since Clemson has played one of the easiest schedules in the conference, it’s hard to know exactly what to make of this accomplishment. In any event, they are theoretically on the outer edges of the Bubble, but will most likely go to the NIT for their first post-season appearance since their last trip to the NIT in 1999.

About VaWolf82

Engineer living in Central Va. and senior curmudgeon amongst SFN authors One wife, two kids, one dog, four vehicles on insurance, and four phones on cell plan...looking forward to empty nest status. Graduated 1982

General NCS Basketball

11 Responses to The Mess in the Middle

  1. Jeff 03/02/2006 at 9:08 PM #

    IMHO, FSU and Maryland are the two teams with the best opportunity to make the NCAA. Let’s define “best opportunity” as “having the least amount of distance to make up”.

    With that said, I’m pulling for them both to step up and take care of business this weekend….and hope that they can each get at least one win in the ACC.

  2. class of '74 03/03/2006 at 6:05 AM #

    FSU has the best talent and Maryland has the best coaching but otherwise this is an ugly group for a selection. If FSU can beat Miami they might be the only one worthy of selection regardless of the other results.

  3. VaWolf82 03/03/2006 at 7:49 AM #

    Go back and look at State’s schedule and results from 2003…it was pretty ugly as well:

    http://www.kenpom.com/sked.php?&y=2003&team=North%20Carolina%20St.

    If MD wins this weekend and then on Friday in the ACCT, then their year will look a lot like State’s from 2003. Whether that will be good enough or not is a whole different discussion. They will have to overcome the “stigma” of winning only two games during the entire month of Feb.

    FSU is in a better shape, just because they have been winning more games at the end of the year. 9-7 and 1-1 in the ACCT would certainly be better than State managed last year.

  4. RickJ 03/03/2006 at 8:23 AM #

    The MD vs. FSU could get very interesting. Assuming both win this weekend and both either win one or lose one in the ACCT – which team has the better resume? On FSU’s side is 9-7, better finish and a home win over Maryland in their only meeting. On MD’s side is a tougher schedule both in and out of the league. Both teams have played Duke twice and State & BC once but MD has played UNC-Chapel Hill twice to once for FSU. MD overall schedule is now ranked the 12th toughest overall and 62nd in OOC. FSU comes in at 81 & 317 respectively.

    In the above scenario, the most likely outcome would be for both to get in or both get left out. If one gets in, expect to hear some major squawking from the other.

  5. Wolfpacklawyer 03/03/2006 at 1:00 PM #

    I’ve got a question for VaWolf. Where do you get your information for prior tournament seedings?

  6. VaWolf82 03/03/2006 at 1:08 PM #

    I’ve gotten four years worth of NCAAT seeds from espn.com. I think that I just googled on the year and “men’s college basketball tournament” and went to the espn link.

    Did you have a specific question?

    If anyone knows of a link that has NCAAT seeds before 2002, I would really like to compile that information.

  7. Wolfpacklawyer 03/03/2006 at 1:45 PM #

    Not to hijack your thread, but a guy who writes for the local paper seems to think that if UNC wins on Sat. and wins the ACCT that they are a lock for a number one seed in the NCAA. I think that the historical trends would seem to say that’s VERY unlikely, but I’d like to look at them a little first.

    I think that would put UNC more in the same boat as Duke from 2003 and I think they were a third seed in the NCAA that year.

  8. VaWolf82 03/03/2006 at 2:19 PM #

    From 2002 thru 2005, the RPI rankings of #1 seeds ranged from #1 thru #7, with an average RPI of #3.

    http://www.statefansnation.com/index.php/archives/2006/01/31/rpi-and-ncaa-seeds/

    UNC currently sits at #13. How far they would move up with an ACCT title would depend on who they play and what everyone ranked above them does. Beating Duke twice would certainly give them a big boost in the rankings….both objective and subjective. But beating BC on Sat and State on Sunday would not give them the same boost. Here is a graph of today’s RPI values….and it shows that UNC could conceivably get to #7, but probably not any further than that.

    http://www.statefansnation.com/images/RPI33.jpg

    In 2003, the ACC was ranked #3…just like this year. Duke beat State in the ACCT finals and got a 3 seed. I think that this pretty clearly shows that the ACCT winner is not really guaranateed anything….it all depends on who you beat.

  9. Jeff 03/03/2006 at 2:21 PM #

    VaWolf — check out this link!

    http://bracketville.tripod.com/

    You will love me for it.

    It is included in our blogroll of links under “Basketball Resources”

  10. Wolfpacklawyer 03/03/2006 at 2:22 PM #

    Thanks for the information. Pretty much backs up what I thought from memory.

  11. VaWolf82 03/03/2006 at 2:23 PM #

    I’ll check it out when I get home. The “tripod” domain is blocked at work.

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